PADDINGTON KEPT MICHAEL waiting in his office for nearly two hours. Under other circumstances, Michael might have been irritated, but he occupied himself with his computer and sifted through the news videos and YouTube podcasts that some of the more enterprising residents and media people had put together on the shooting. By the time he was told that the inspector would see him, Michael had amassed an interesting amount of material that he hadn’t expected to get.
The Blackpool police department had taken up residence in an old Victorian that hadn’t been updated in any way other than to add necessary electronics and knock down a few non-load-bearing walls to create more open space. The place tended to darkness and felt heavy.
Since Michael knew the way, he headed off himself. When he passed Lockwood Nightingale, the solicitor pointedly ignored him.
Paddington’s office was in the rear. Photographs and awards spanning his career hung on the walls. He’d been a cop in London, then had worked his way up and plateaued. He’d planned on riding out his last few years in Blackpool in relative semiretirement.
“Come in, Mr. Graham.” Paddington sorted through papers on his desk.
Michael sat in one of the two chairs in front of the inspector’s desk. “I just passed Nightingale in the hall.”
“That man is annoying. Filled right to the top with flummery.”
“Not a good morning?”
Paddington gestured at the small television in a corner of the room. On screen, a reporter stood in front of the Merciful Angels Hospital. “You’d think there was nothing else happening in the world.”
“Perhaps it only seems that way to you.”
The inspector heaved a sigh. “Mr. Graham, perhaps we could get to the point of this meeting. You’ve been waiting long enough that I thought you would have surely gotten tired of sitting out there.”
“After the first couple of hours, things get easier.”
“I’ll try to remember that.”
Michael placed his notebook computer on the desk. “May I show you something?”
“Is there any way I can stop you?”
“You’ll want to see this.” Michael opened up the file with the three-dimensional rendering of the library model of Blackpool.
AFTER TWO SOLID HOURS of meetings, stroking bruised egos and putting out fires, Molly was ready for a brief respite. She wasn’t supposed to be so involved with the marina’s remodeling, but since some of the marina fund had been stolen and members of the planning committee had been arrested a couple of weeks ago, Molly had had to step in. She walked down the harbor boardwalk, the new one, though it was new only in places, toward Grandage’s Bait and Tackle for a coffee.
As she passed by Coffey’s Garage, she remembered that the young woman whose flat the sniper had used worked there. Molly struggled to recall the young woman’s name, then changed direction and headed toward the garage.
Beaten and weathered tin covered the building’s exterior. Salt water had finally clawed under coats of paint and eaten into the metal, leaving rusty brown age spots that had crumbled away in places. New pieces of tin had been screwed into place over some blemishes and painted as close to the original color as possible.
When the renovation of the marina had begun, Molly had tried to convince the owner, Randall Coffey, to upgrade the building, but so far the man had remained adamant. As Coffey had put it, his family’s business had run that way and in that location for generations and he saw no reason to change. The place remained an eyesore, but Blackpool residents and frequent guests in town continued to take their boats and vehicles to Randall Coffey.
She found him standing under the hood of an antique American pickup. Coffey was a lean, rawboned man just short of sixty, his long gray hair pulled back in a ponytail that hung past his shoulder blades. His short-cropped beard was a little lighter gray. The sleeves of his canvas work shirt had been torn off and military tattoos of a stalking panther faded on his upper arms.
“Afternoon, Mrs. Graham.” Coffey cleaned a wrench with a grease-stained red rag.
“Afternoon, Mr. Coffey. I see you’re hard at work.” Molly had to speak loudly to be heard over the constant whir and chatter of air-assisted power wrenches.
“I always am. Otherwise I’d have to close up shop and think about financing a retirement.”
Molly smiled at that. There were Blackpool residents who insisted Randall Coffey still had the first dime he’d ever made.
“You come here snooping around after young Kate, Mrs. Graham?”
Knowing that any attempt to avoid the question would only be scoffed at, Molly fessed up. “I did.”
Coffey frowned. “I figured you or the mister, or probably both, would have been by yesterday.”
“Unfortunately, we were detained.”
“So I heard. Bad bit of business at the hospital.”
“It was.”
Coffey nodded to the rear of the shop. “You’ll find her in the back, tearing a boat motor apart. She hasn’t been talking to the reporters that have been by. Don’t know what you expect to learn. That poor child didn’t see nothing nor nobody. Some miscreant just broke into her house is all. Can’t stop you from wasting your time, though. Seems like some folks have got a lot of it to waste.”
“Thank you, Mr. Coffey.”
“Don’t overstay your welcome, Mrs. Graham. This is a working garage. If the wrenches aren’t turning, we’re not making a profit. I make sure all my mechanics remember that.”
Molly skirted the pickup and headed to the rear of the shop. Air-pressure lines and tool carts appeared to her to lie everywhere with reckless abandon, but the half-dozen men Coffey had working for him seemed to know exactly where everything was.
She found Kate laboring at a stained wooden table. A large motor lay in pieces at her feet and scattered across the table. Molly recognized the young woman from the newspaper pictures and television footage.
Only a few inches over five feet, Kate was a petite young woman dressed in a sleeveless coverall. Colorful tattoos stained her arms from wrist to shoulder, most of them of dragons and fish. Her ginger-colored hair barely touched her shoulders and frizzed in all directions. She noticed Molly’s approach at once and watched her from the corner of her eye.
“Hello, Kate. I’m—”
The young woman finished tightening a bolt and looked up in disdain. “You’re Mrs. Graham.”
“Molly. That’s right. I thought maybe I could talk to you briefly.”
“Ain’t got nothing to say and I don’t know nothing, neither.”
“I haven’t asked you anything yet.”
“You don’t have to. Ain’t but one thing people want to talk to me about these days.” She turned her attention back to the motor. “Until yesterday, nobody in this town cared nothing about me, nor what I did. Didn’t realize how much I liked that till it was gone.”
The resentment rolled off the woman in waves. Molly remembered being that young, but she’d never been that bitter. Still, she saw the vulnerability that was there for any young woman that age.
“I’m not here to force you to talk, Kate.”
“The likes of you don’t intimidate me. I breathe the same air as you do, and I’m just as entitled to it.”
“I’m here because my husband’s friend Rohan Wallace may be in trouble. You probably know Rohan. Maybe you know Michael, as well.”
At first Kate didn’t reply. Then she shrugged. “I seen ’em round. We favor some of the same taverns. ’Course, here in Blackpool, it ain’t as if you got a lot of places to do your drinking.”
Molly didn’t go to many of the bars Michael frequented when he was out on the town. “My husband’s worried about Rohan. So am I.”
“Breaking and entering into Crowe’s Nest?” Kate shook her head. “Way I hear it, Rohan didn’t have no history of that. The judge will probably go lenient on him.”
“We’re not concerned about the legal problems of his situation. We’re more troubled by what happened at the hospital.”
“You mean that man getting shot.”
“I do.”
“Whoever took that bloke out is long gone.”
“I wish I could believe that.”
Kate tapped a wrench against the motor irritably. “Why would someone like that stick around this place?”
“Maybe to shoot Rohan, too.”
That caught the young woman’s attention. She looked up at Molly with renewed interest. “Why do you think he’s the next target?”
“Because I don’t believe the sniper just chanced upon that vantage point to shoot from. I think he deliberately chose your flat. But I don’t know if he was trying to kill Timothy Harper or waiting for an opportunity to kill Rohan.”
“Either way, he’s long gone by now. Won’t be no more bother.”
“I hope what you’re saying is true, but I have to plan on the man still being here.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want Rohan to be hurt.” Molly paused. “I don’t think you want that, either.”
“Ain’t up to me.”
“I heard you have a boyfriend.”
“Sure, a regular guy. He’s up in London now. Trying to find a job.”
“Must be hard being away from him.”
Kate gazed up at Molly suspiciously. “Sometimes. But I know he’s doing it for us.”
“It’s still difficult getting left behind.”
The young woman shrugged. “My choice. I’ve been to London a few times. Don’t like it there. Don’t like it here, either, but I hate the big cities even more. Too loud. Too busy. He’ll come back once he’s made some money.” She returned her attention to her work.
“It must be frightening.”
“What?”
“Thinking that maybe he’ll decide he likes it there and won’t come home.”
“You haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.”
“You don’t think I was your age?” Molly smiled. “When I was at university, I got involved with a guy. Thought it was forever love.”
She looked at Molly again. “Michael?”
“No. Not Michael.”
Kate paused, then reached for a bottled soft drink she had sitting on the bench.
“His name was Caleb,” Molly said. “He was a football player. He turned pro his senior year. I still had two years to go. I wanted to finish my degree, possibly get a master’s, before I started chasing him all over the country. He told me that he’d be faithful.” Molly shrugged. The story was true, but it had happened to one of her sorority sisters, not her. She’d made her own mistakes, but not that one. “Maybe he was. For a while. But in the end, he decided he couldn’t be torn between what he loved…and me.”
“But you got Mr. Graham in the end. You two seem like you get on all right.”
“We do. But Mr. Graham also got me.” Molly smiled and winked conspiratorially. “Our relationship isn’t a one-way street. After Caleb, I thought I’d never love again. And I didn’t for a very long time. Till I met Michael. Even then, it wasn’t easy. Some of the same old problems were there.”
“Him being British and you being American?”
Molly nodded. “One of the biggest hurdles we had to cross. And whichever way it had gone, wherever we’d ended up, I know we’d have been happy. It’s just how we are. But I didn’t know that at first.” She looked at the young woman. “Sometimes, when you’re afraid you’re going to get your heart broken, it’s easier to protect yourself by finding other guys who remind you that you’re attractive.”
Kate sipped her drink and thought about that.
“Paddington doesn’t buy the way you tell it, either, Kate. Not really. He doesn’t believe that sniper just happened onto your flat with its excellent view of the hospital. But he’s not pushing it, because he doesn’t think it’s really going to matter. I don’t have that luxury, because Michael keeps putting himself on the line for Rohan. That whole friendship thing. I don’t want Michael’s good heart to end up getting him killed.”
For a moment, Molly was sure she was getting through to Kate. Then the young woman sighed and cursed. She put the bottle down.
“I knew the guy that probably took those shots. I was the one that brought him to my flat.”